


The Sound of Silence

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Adpotion, Canon compliant-ish, Dark Hannibal, Dark Will, Deaf Character, Eat The Rude, F/F, F/M, FBI Trainees, Hannibal Loves Will, Hannigram is Real, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Sign Language, So is Climate Change, Soulmate AU, Soulmates, Will Loves Hannibal?, mentioned child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 01:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13307403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: Hannibal Lecter has accepted the solitude of his life: a silent life soaked in blood and passions that he doesn't expect to share with another person. Understanding has never been part of his expectations, and since he is nearly fifty, he has grown used to the idea that his soul is quite singular.Will Graham has no expectation that his life will ever change now. He will teach and consult and exist in the peace and quiet that his lonely soul has offered him. He has begun to think he might actually prefer it this way, he has never been a man who sought steady companionship.When Jack Crawford pulls them together in a desperate attempt by the FBI to save more women from the Minnesota Strike, it is safe to say that things are bound to change and change quickly.Soulmate AU- The first thing you can hear is your soulmate's voice.





	The Sound of Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, folks! I hope you enjoy this first part, depending on what people think, it could either be two or five chapters long varying between Hannibal and Will focused. Anywho, I hope you like it, please R and R, let me know what you think!

 

 

He was thin, too thin actually, and his clothes hung like darkened drapes over his arms. He was sitting at the head of the table with a gaggle of younger children. He was watching everything but them, his eyes flicking to where Robertas Lecter stood watching him in the doorway where they stayed fixed for only a moment longer than perhaps they should have before flitting away again to where a girl was removing a pan of biscuits from the oven. An attempted guise of normalcy, though it was clear that there was very little normal hear.

The woman, standing over a pot of what must have been oatmeal that the children were scraping out of bowls, was cursing them with various obscenities as the small ones dropped their bowls and splattered things on the tables. They, of course, couldn’t hear her, and continued to make their noises, signing simple things to each other since it was clear there was very little formal education and the things these children knew were colloquial at best. They were far quieter than most children he knew: rarely able to hear themselves, children ate loudly, made loud noises when moving, screamed at odd volumes when they were angry: these children, despite the women’s clear frustration with them, were nearly silent as they ate their breakfast. His eyes found small scars on their faces, haphazardly healed, and had to think very little to ascertain how they had gotten them.

“Excuse me,” He said, in perfect French, and the woman nearly lost her shawl in her frightened jump. He saw the boy’s eyes flicker to him again, knowing he had caused the reaction. But his lips were pressed into a thin line of disappointment. It was common, he knew. This boy did not know they were related, and it was always a hope that the next person to speak might be one’s soulmate, that their voice might open up a world of sound and vibrancy that only those who knew their soulmates understood. Like this woman, who turned to him now.

“Hello,” She said, words somewhat garbled. “Can I help you?”

As he watched, a child went to the oatmeal, spooning himself some into a bowl. But his arms, thin as small sticks, were too short to hold the long-handle ladle and in a moment, he had dropped a full spoon of oatmeal to the floor with a loud clatter. The woman turned sharply and the child cowered, but what he suspected was typically a response of a sound striking across the face was instead stalled by a falsely gentle voice. “Clean it up, please.” She signed to him, handing him a rag.

“I am here to collect my nephew.” He answered in her native tongue, noting the relief on her face with little pity. “Hannibal Lecter.” The woman turned instantly to the boy still watching them, blinking once.

“Are you sure?” The words didn’t seem to be on purpose, and in fact her face turned a dark red as soon as she said them. “I am sorry, I only meant…”

He pulled papers from the inner part of his jacket, unfolding them carefully and handing them to her. “I’m looking for a girl as well.” He interrupted her. “Hannibal’s sister.”

“You will have to ask him.” She said. “I will have him get his things.”

She looked up at the boy, nearly jumping again when she realized his eyes were already on her, seeming to dissect every movement of her hands as she signed an explanation to him in rapid succession. He stood, that same sharp gaze turned instead on Robertas, before he turned to go upstairs, returning only minutes later with a small parcel of things.

“Godspeed.” She said as Robertas led him out, hand on his shoulder. He recoiled from the touch, and Robertas could feel the sharp ridges of his shoulder bones under his skin, pressing too sharply through the clothing. A glance down and he saw bruises, disappearing under the edges of his shirt. For a moment, anger flared within him, but having that woman removed would most likely meant the abandonment of all the children inside and he could not do that to them with a sound conscience.

He stopped, before they got to the driveway where his car was parked. “Is your sister with the girls?” He signed quickly with his hands, gesturing to the equally ramshackle building across the way that teamed with even more, but equally silent children, as the one they had just left.

“She’s dead.” Was the response, accompanied by a stare that might have been comforting in the way it reflected the eyes of his late brother, but instead seemed to bore through his eyes and into his body, peeling back the skin and looking instead at what might be inside him.

 

 

Hannibal sat across from his patient, a balding man with a penchant for adultery who was laughing exasperatedly in the chair across from him. His soulmate was dead, and since he had joined a group of others in a similar predicament, he had bounced between and stacked his partners because the level of satisfaction, physical or temporal, was never the same.

He was speaking out loud, despite being fully aware that Hannibal couldn’t hear him, and instead would only sign haphazardly and not nearly enough to match the quantity of what he had to say.

“Please.” Hannibal said out loud, and the man blinked at him startled. It was rare, Hannibal supposed, for those that hadn’t met their mate to know how to speak. But as he had moved from the emergency room to psychiatric practice, he had learned some of the basics. Though he could not hear himself speak, it did the trick and the man signed an apology, signing instead of speaking in dramatic tones.

He was, by all accounts, an entirely uninteresting individual. His psyche was that of an entitled philanderer and Hannibal had little interest in continuing discussion with him about how sex with the woman whose wife that owned the bread shop had died was not as good as it was with his own late wife. It would be interesting, however, to manipulate that same psyche. See what he could get the man to do with only a few simple suggestions. He was prone to narcissism, misogyny, and self-pity. Mixed together, they could make an entertaining enough cocktail, though he was starting to wonder if the late breadseller’s wife might be a more conducive patient.

“What do I do about it, Doctor?” The question was desperate, beads of sweat dripping down his skin into the collar of his shirt, “Will my life ever be good again?”

Hannibal blinked and closed his notebook on the man, who stiffened a bit at the action, but relaxed nearly instantly. He began his to weave his response watching the creeping instances of doubt and fear and purpose flit across the man’s face with a small smile on his own. There were three ways this might go, he was curious, as the man walked out, to see which it might be. Nothing that could ever be traced to him, nothing on record, nothing on paper, nothing even that he had suggested to this man that might be incriminating.

He sat, legs crossed during their typical appointment time, looking at the empty chair across from him. The story was there on the third page of the Baltimore Tribune: His patient was dead. He had leapt out of the window of a hotel after threatening to kill both himself and the woman inside. Having talked him out of using the gun, the woman had not managed to be able to stop him from leaping from the balcony where he had died, half-dresse, on the sidewalk below as an old woman waited on the hotel valet. He cocked his head, wondering how many people had read the story, before standing, setting the newspaper back on the end table where it belonged, waiting on his next patient to arrive at the top of the next hour.

 

 

At nearly fifty, he had decided that there were quite possibly going to be things he did not experience. It did not bother him immensely, he considered himself to be a very solitary figure and relished the freedom for his work. His practice was flourishing, he had long ago established himself within the psychiatric community, and with his further study of psychology had come the realization that perhaps he would never meet another figure that shared his own proclivities, no person whose soul could pair wholly with one such as his own.

So instead, he sought to satisfy his curiosities, fully tuned into the world around him while others assumed that he wasn’t. Their weakness then, those who considered themselves to be more well-constructed to live in this world and still never knew he was coming for them.

He had been contacted by an old colleague for a consultation for the FBI, apparently to profile an FBI special agent with a penchant for catching serial killers. Not that Hannibal didn’t understand that: Miriam Lass was well enough company for the past year or so. Her mind, he had thought, was singularly fascinating, and she was at his employ should he need her in the future. She was resilient, but even the strongest minds could bend enough to count as broken, and she had finally reached the point where his fascination with her was at its limits. He needed more. And so, he had accepted.

When he arrived, Jack Crawford had been there, extending a hand. He tugged on his ear, indicating that he couldn’t hear and saw the brief, almost involuntary flash of pity in Jack’s eyes before his face was resolute and he signed a customary, formal greeting to him. Jack Crawford was an interesting man, more clever than most probably gave him credit for; highly trained in combat and subduing criminals, preferring to travel with a stock rifle rather than the customary handgun of most agents. More accurate, far more deadly. But Hannibal could see the pistol strapped to his waist even now, catching glints off of the pale fluorescent glow above them.

He wasn’t unfriendly, however imposing he may have been. The others they passed spoke customary greetings and Hannibal watched as their bodies moved in the standard patterns of subordinates, clearing plenty of space for them, allowing them room to move around. Some looked at him, spoke as well, and he returned their words with thin-lipped smiles. The slight, nearly-acceptable rudeness still irked him. It was assumed that by the time people reached his age that they had found their mate. And he doubted, even by his silent response to them, that they could tell that was not the case for him. It would have been far more polite for them to ask given the customary signs, but since they were passing encounters, perhaps that was too much to expect of them.

When they entered what must have been the working room, there was a man there, not facing them, not reacting when they came in. He was fidgeting, the slight tension and release of his shoulder muscles indicative not of nervousness but of genuine discomfort, as if expecting someone to come up behind him at any moment.

He did turn as Jack moved to his desk while gesturing to where Hannibal now stood, moving to the chair next to him. Hannibal watched for a moment, almost captivated his hands telling this man he couldn’t hear him stilled in his pockets. The man’s mouth curved unnaturally, lips twisting for a moment.

“Hello.” He said.

And Hannibal heard him.

 

The scandal would have been paramount, in Hannibal’s opinion, if not for the quick intervention of Jack Crawford. He seemed, in spite of his best attempt at the contrary, to have thoroughly frightened Will Graham by speaking his name back to him. He had seen the look of near horror on the man’s face and if it had not been in direct contrast to Hannibal’s own delight at the occasion, it would have been fascinating. How uncommon was it for one to not want to meet their soulmate?

Needless to say, any psychological evaluation performed by either Hannibal or Alana Bloom would have been dismissed immediately and so now Will Graham was spending far more time in the company of Frederick Chilton. Hannibal, however, had become a mainstay at the FBI in consultation, which he found fascinating. He wondered how much of it was because Jack was worried that Will might leave without him present; Hannibal was beginning to wonder if the opposite might be true.

Either way, he found himself seated on a plane next to a sleeping Jack Crawford, watching a video on how to correctly the various syllables of English and he whispered them softly to himself. Will Graham sat in a different section of the plan, his own headset on, and as Hannibal watched, he did the same motions. He tilted his head, watching as Will Graham was teaching himself to speak beyond the rudimentary words they had both learned.

In Minnesota, things were no different, though they did continue to end up together in various situations. Will Graham drove them various places and Hannibal let the radio play between them, hands pressed to the door in the familiarity of having always felt the vibrations through his fingers, now combined with being able to hear the actual notes and songs that accompanied it.

“It seems normal.” He finally said, and saw Will’s eyes flicker sideways as they pulled into Garrett Jacob Hobbs house. Nothing seemed remiss, and he wondered whether the man had actually headed his phone call. He had made sure he could speak what he wanted to, but there was a chance the man had simply chosen to ignore him.

Then the door opened and Hannibal watched as a woman, pouring blood from her throat, stumbled outside. He could hear Will’s visceral reaction to her, the gasping changes in breath, the pure panic as his hands clasped over her throat. It was a new level of exhilarating, strange, and he watched as Will stumbled from the lifeless body collapsed on the stoop to kick in the door of the house, handgun poised.

He stopped to look down at who must have been Mrs. Hobbs, empty eyes staring back at him as the blood stopped flowing. Such violence, it seemed, the blood staining her top that was speckled with pancake batter and bacon grease from where she must have been cooking breakfast, coloring the white flower pattern red. It was almost brilliant to see, such a contrast with the relative peace of the rest of the neighborhood, a car pulling into a drive a few homes away, three birds collecting in the birdfeeder in a backyard tree. Then the sound was broken by gunshots in rapid succession, loud bangs that nearly startled him out of what had felt like an almost trance. And he went inside.

He watched Will Graham, positioned on his knees, haphazardly cradling this girl’s neck as blood poured through his fingers, mixing with her mothers in an infectious cocktail. He watched for a moment, playing through various scenarios before making a snap decision. Will Graham was his soulmate. He wanted to know more about this man, what tied them so ardently together. But to break down walls, he needed an entry point, a crack in the bricks that Will had constructed between them the instant they had met.

And so he went, down on his knees, and moved the man’s shaking hands from her throat, replacing them with his own in a way that would actually stabilize the bleeding. “Call for help.” He said, the words tasting almost strange. He could not remember ever asking for help in his life. “She needs both of us to survive.”

And Will, glasses splattered with blood, nodded beautifully. And Hannibal looked down at the girl between them, still convulsing, and wondered how strong of a tether she might be.

 


End file.
